Content and news by Rob Williams

A short time ago I reviewed the spectacular Bluetake i-PHONO mini
Bluetooth Stereo Headphone. Since its release, the i-PHONO mini has gone on
to win the Bluetooth SIG Best of CES Contest 2006 in two categories
(“Stereo Audio” and “Overall Bluetooth SIG Best of CES”). Though in my
review I only tested the headphone, I mentioned that Bluetake also plans to
release the i-PHONO mini in a combo pack, which includes an iPod optimized
stereo transmitter. That transmitter, the BT450Tx, will be the subject of
this review.

Check out the full review over at A True Reviews.

The Act-On ADM 0520 MicMouse is your standard 800dpi optical USB mouse. It is
extremely lightweight and comfortable to use. Pointing is precise and this
mouse can easily take over as your primary pointing device. What makes the
MicMouse unique is its onboard omni directional microphone. The microphone is
positioned on the top of the mouse just back of the scroll wheel.

Check out the full review over at Mod The Box.

With a default core clock of 700MHz, and a memory clock of 1.6GHz. The ASUS EAX X1800XT TOP card is certainly among the best of the X1800XT crop. ASUS has done a wonderful job with a difficult situation. At the end of the day the ASUS EAX X1800XT TOP card is a good card that can hold its own in today’s ever changing market, and although the X1900 series has arrived, the TOP X1800XT still rocks in the gaming world.

Check out the full review over at Motherboards.org.

While the focus is always on the sexy, high-end cards, the reality is that most cards being sold today are lower-end cards. Today, we will take a look at the latest entry-level card to come out of the ASUS factory – the ASUS Extreme N7300GS. Based on the new NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS GPU, this card will be simple and affordable. But just how fast is it? Will you be able to play 3D games even using this entry-level card? Read on and find out!

Check out the full review at Rojak Pot.

At CES the bigger companies give out their press kits on USB drives, and even on memory cards (got two of those!), and they also just give away USB drives to people who stop by to see them. In total I received 8 USB drives at CES, along with the 2 memory cards, one of the memory cards was a microSD from Sandisk with the adapter, it had their press kit and an album from The Rolling Stones on it, the other was a standard SD memory card from Simpletech.

Check out the full article at Think Computers.

Last week, we took a quick look at what NVIDIA’s SLI has to offer. In that
article, we concluded that while SLI does work, you should not expect
tremendous gains in frame rates. In average, SLI can only offer around 30 %
increase, occurring mostly when AA and AF are enabled. However, performance
is not the only feature of SLI.

Head over to Tech-Hounds for the second part to the article.

When it comes to a multi-headed environment under Linux, there
are two popular options for consumers — Xinerama and TwinView. Although
TwinView was developed by NVIDIA for allowing multiple monitors to be
powered by a single GPU with their array of GeForce graphics cards,
Xinerama was originally developed by Digital Equipment Corporation under
the name of PanoramiX, and was later incorporated into the X Window
System. Today at Phoronix, we have studied the frame-rate gaming
performance under multi-headed NVIDIA TwinView and Xinerama
configurations as well as a traditional single-head design.

Check out the full article over at Phoronix.

The SilverStone Temjin TJ07 Case has a uni-body aluminum outer frame, & has an all aluminum compartmentalized design. There are 7 x 5.25″ and 6 x 3.5″ drive bays. Two 90mm and four 120mm fans come standard, and are uniquely designed, 11-bladed Ultra-Maglev, with oil protection bearings. This product has full tower server case written all over it. This has been a long anticipated product and there’s no wonder, it’s sick! Watch the Video to find out more…

Check out the full review over at 3D Gameman.

ABIT is one of the most popular motherboard manufacturers for enthusiasts and gamers. Their products are full of innovations like UGuru or SilentOTES. The AT8 is the latest Crossfire capable board from ABIT and uses ATI’s RD480 chipset. As southbridge the ULI M1575 is used. What makes this board even more interesting is its competitive price which will lie in the USD 120 range.

Check out the full review over at techPowerUp!.

The Thermalright HR-01 would be perfect for a HTPC, or any situation where you need your computer to be at its absolute quietest. With no fan on the HR-01, the processor cooler makes absolutely no noise. I was initially concerned that it would not be able to cool my Opteron 148 sufficiently, but in my tests I received a 10 degrees Celsius drop from the stock AMD CPU cooler.

Check out the full review over at Big Bruin.

Maxtor’s recent press release sounded exciting: Could 1 Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) in an external hard drive actually be true? Well, yes and no. The total capacity of the OneTouch III is indeed 1 TB, but it is achieved by assembling two 500 GB hard drives into one enclosure that is double the size of conventional external hard drive products.

Toms takes apart both the Maxtor and Lacie products and see’s what they are made of. They are both roughly 931GB and offer necessary backup software but cost close to $900! Read all about them here.

Last year, we wrote about MySpace being blamed for some stupid kids who used it to spread rumors that there was going to be a shooting at school the next day. It was the kids’ fault — not MySpace. Now, there’s a new story about a series of sexual assaults on underage girls — where the meetings were facilitated by MySpace. However, the article seems to focus entirely on the MySpace aspect of this, which really is a minor point. The real culprits are the guys who did this — and focusing on MySpace is going to put the blame in the wrong space.

Blame will be thrown anywhere nowadays. I certainly wouldn’t blame MySpace for such events; people should be able to think for themselves, really. Check out the posting at Tech Dirt.

The target of this project was to find the weakest system where you can run Windows XP. Keep in mind, that Microsoft official requirements are a CPU with 233 MHz an 64 MB of RAM. But that had to be beaten!

This is an impressive project, and they actually managed 8MHz! It was such a low frequency, that they had to use an old ISA video card to run! Check out the full testing notes here.

The Kama Sutra worm, designed to begin deleting files on infected computers this morning, has caused virtually no damage, according to antivirus firms.

The worm, also known as Nyxem.E, MyWife and Blackworm, has been circulating for a couple of weeks, and antivirus vendors said businesses have done well to ensure that their networks were protected against the pest.

This is definitely some good news! It certainly helped that word got around and people took action to protect their PC before the attack. Read all about it at News.com.

I _literally_ feel that we do not – as software developers – have the moral right to enforce our rules on hardware manufacturers. We are not crusaders, trying to force people to bow to our superior God. We are trying to show others that co-operation and openness works better.

Torvalds obviously has a lot to say against the DRM restrictions, but he does make some real good points. You can read all of his thoughts over at NewsForge.

The weekend is SO close, but don’t think of leaving until you read up some reviews! Pro-Clockers takes a look at a hard-drive enclosure from a company you’ve probably never heard of. The Vizo Luxon is absolutely gorgeous in my opinion, and almost looks like the “Lian Li” of HDD enclosures. EclipseOC takes a look at a classic OCZ kit that you will likely have a hard time acquiring today. Rolling in at DDR466 3-3-2-8, these Plat EB’s are some of the more fun kits to overclock which made them legendary.

Cases & Enclosures
• Antec P150 – Hardware-Review
• Tsunami Leo ATX Case – Xtreme Computing
• Vizo Luxon Hard Enclosure – Pro-Clockers

Cooling
• Cooler Master Susurro – PC Apex
• Thermalright HR-01 “High-Riser” Heatsink – OCIA

Memory & Storage
• Corsair TwinX2048-4000PT – Pro-Clockers
• OCZ 1GB Gold PC3500GX – Motherboards.org
• OCZ Gold PC3700EB – Eclipse OC
• Western Digital Caviar SE 200GB – TechTastic

Motherboards & CPU’s
• Albatron K8SLI – Phoronix
• Foxconn WinFast 6150K8MA-8EKRS – Viper Lair
• Gigabyte G1975X – TweakTown

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• Creative TravelDock 900 – UK Gamer
• Klipsch iGroove Desktop Audio System for iPod – Bona Fide Reviews
• Sony NW-A1000 MP3 Walkman – UK Gamer
• X-Micro WLAN 11g Combo Finder Adapter – Think Computers

Video Cards & Monitor
• ATI X1900 XT Crossfire vs. NVIDIA 7800 GTX 512 SLI – GamePC
• BFG GeForce 7800 GS OC AGP – Hot Hardware
• BFG GeForce 7800 GS OC AGP – Neoseeker

• Dell 2405FPW 24-inch Monitor – Design Technica
• NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS Tech Report – Rojak Pot

Etcetera & Contests
• 5 Days Left To Enter OCIA.net / CoolerMaster Giveaway – OCIA
• Fujifilm FinePix S9000 Digital Camera – XYZ Computing

Fremont, CA (February 2, 2006) – Corsair® Memory, Inc., a worldwide leader in high performance memory and cooling products for enthusiasts and overclockers, today launched XMS™-3200C2 XPERT™ 2GB memory kits for advanced users who demand performance, aesthetics and functionality in one package. Corsair’s proprietary XPERT memory is the industry’s first intelligent memory module that monitors and displays critical performance parameters. Creating a category of its own, the XPERT series raises the bar on enthusiast memory.

You can read the full press release here.

SANTA CLARA, CA—FEBRUARY 2, 2006—NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, today announced the new NVIDIA® GeForce 7800 GS graphics processing unit (GPU) for AGP-based systems. Boasting the feature set of the award-winning GeForce 7800 GPUs, the new GeForce 7800 GS GPU features advanced technologies including:

You can read the full press release here. There are plenty of reviews up today, but the card doesn’t amaze me as I had hoped it would. The card is comparable to the top end ATI AGP cards, but it has SM3.0 support! In the end, it will cost only a little bit more than the 6800 GS and likely less than it’s ATI competition.

Check out the reviews at Guru 3D, Tech Report, HardOCP, Technic3D, Hexus, Bjorn3D, PC Perspective and Bit-Tech.

Millis, Massachusetts −February, 2006 − Kanguru solutions announces the release of the latest addition to the Kanguru QuickSilver family, an external Serial ATA and USB2.0 combination hard drive featuring lightning fast transfer speeds and capacities up to 500GB. The Kanguru QuickSilver features both USB2.0 and Serial ATA connectivity, the latest
in computer bus technology.

You can read the full press release here.

Wednesday, February 1, 2006—San Francisco, CA—Women in Games International, a non-profit organization in the interactive entertainment industry, today announced their keynote speaker for their next conference, Women in Games International-San Francisco. Robin Harper, SVP of Community and Support for Linden Lab, will present “From the Virtual to the Real: How Second Life created an online world and community that strongly appeals to women, and how the virtual world has changed the real life of women participants.”

You can read the full press release here.